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GUI is not working

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Posts: 55
in Ubuntu

Hi ,

I installed Ubuntu in my system two months back and it is running fine. But now i am not able to login to GUI. The moment when i select Ubuntu ( Windows XP also running in the system) it is directly going to CUI. Can you please help me to solve this problem, what happened to GUI suddenly.

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Ravi.K

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Comments

  • Posts: 11
    Try at the commandline :startx

    see if there is an error. If there isn't, you'll have to change the /etc/inittab file at this line:
    1. # The default runlevel is defined here
    2. id:5:initdefault:

    Make sure it says id:5:initdefault


    then reboot
  • Posts: 55
    Thanks very much.

    After I ran the startx command it was enter to GUI mode. But i got an error also(Error: The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:GNOME_FastUserSwitchAPPLET") .


    There is no inittab file under /etc/ . Please find the out put of ls command under /etc/ below.

    room1@room1-desktop:/etc$ ls -lrt inittab
    ls: cannot access inittab: No such file or directory
    room1@room1-desktop:/etc$ [file name=Screenshot_Error.png size=17045]http://linux.com/media/kunena/attachments/legacy/files/Screenshot_Error.png[/file] Screenshot_Error.png
  • Posts: 501
    The missing applet probably won't stop the GUI from running. The missing inittab is more problematic since it is needed to properly start the system. Here is an example (/etc/inittab from my CentOS system): 
    1. #
    2. # inittab       This file describes how the INIT process should set up
    3. #               the system in a certain run-level.
    4. #
    5. # Author:       Miquel van Smoorenburg, <miquels@drinkel.nl.mugnet.org>
    6. #               Modified for RHS Linux by Marc Ewing and Donnie Barnes
    7. #
    8.  
    9. # Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
    10. #   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
    11. #   1 - Single user mode
    12. #   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
    13. #   3 - Full multiuser mode
    14. #   4 - unused
    15. #   5 - X11
    16. #   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
    17. #
    18. id:5:initdefault:
    19. # id:3:initdefault:
    20.  
    21. # System initialization.
    22. si::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
    23.  
    24. l0:0:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 0
    25. l1:1:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 1
    26. l2:2:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 2
    27. l3:3:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 3
    28. l4:4:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 4
    29. l5:5:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 5
    30. l6:6:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 6
    31.  
    32. # Trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE
    33. ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now
    34.  
    35. # When our UPS tells us power has failed, assume we have a few minutes
    36. # of power left.  Schedule a shutdown for 2 minutes from now.
    37. # This does, of course, assume you have powerd installed and your
    38. # UPS connected and working correctly.
    39. pf::powerfail:/sbin/shutdown -f -h +2 "Power Failure; System Shutting Down"
    40.  
    41. # If power was restored before the shutdown kicked in, cancel it.
    42. pr:12345:powerokwait:/sbin/shutdown -c "Power Restored; Shutdown Cancelled"
    43.  
    44.  
    45. # Run gettys in standard runlevels
    46. 1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
    47. 2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
    48. 3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
    49. 4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
    50. 5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
    51. 6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6
    52.  
    53. # Run xdm in runlevel 5
    54. x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon
  • Posts: 55
    I searched in internet and most of the places it was mentioned that there is no /etc/inittab file in Ubuntu because Ubuntu uses /etc/event.d/rc-default file, but when i look in to the file rc-default it is refering to inittab file under etc.

    I created inittab file under /etc and copied the same contents provided above. I rebooted the system still it is going to CMD only. Please find the rc-default file contents below.

    room1@room1-desktop:/etc$ ls -lrt inittab
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1737 2009-06-18 09:52 inittab
    room1@room1-desktop:/etc$

    room1@room1-desktop:/etc/event.d$ ls -lrt rc-default
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 485 2008-04-11 19:19 rc-default
    room1@room1-desktop:/etc/event.d$


    room1@room1-desktop:/etc/event.d$ more rc-default
    # rc - runlevel compatibility
    #
    # This task guesses what the "default runlevel" should be and starts the
    # appropriate script.

    start on stopped rcS

    script
    runlevel --reboot || true

    if grep -q -w -- "-s\|single\|S" /proc/cmdline; then
    telinit S
    elif [ -r /etc/inittab ]; then
    RL="$(sed -n -e "/^id:[0-9]*:initdefault:/{s/^id://;s/:.*//;p}" /etc/inittab || true)"
    if [ -n "$RL" ]; then
    telinit $RL
    else
    telinit 2
    fi
    else
    telinit 2
    fi
    end script
    room1@room1-desktop:/etc/event.d$

    I ran the sed command line present in the rc-default file at the command prompt and it gives the out put as 5. Please find the sed command and its out put below.

    room1@room1-desktop:/etc/event.d$ sed -n -e "/^id:[0-9]*:initdefault:/{s/^id://;s/:.*//;p}" /etc/inittab
    5
    room1@room1-desktop:/etc/event.d$


    Please help me to resolve this problem.
  • Posts: 5
    Is X maybe trying to start up, but failing for some reason and then Ubuntu is just dropping you to a login prompt?

    See if you can have a look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log for errors.
    Although the fact that you can run startx and it launches (with some applet errors) leads me to believe there's nothing wrong with X.

    Just need to poke around the system to see if you can get an indication as to what's erroring out.

    check output of
    dmesg | more
    more /var/log/messages
    more /var/log/Xorg.0.log
    more /var/log/syslog

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